A New Medley of Memories Part 2

It is really, and manifestly, the likeness of a seventeenth-century French prelate--probably Bossuet--in the episcopal dress of the time of Louis XIV! Most of our Magdalen portraits are, I think, authentic; but then they do not profess to represent personages of the early Middle Ages! The best and most interesting portraits at Oxford belong to the nineteenth century. I always enjoyed showing my friends those of Tait and Manning, side by side in Balliol Hall, and recalling how their college tutor once remarked, when they had left his room after a lecture: "Those two undergraduates are worthy and talented young men: I hope I shall live to see them both archbishops!" His prophetic wish was duly fulfilled, though he had probably never dreamt of Canterbury and Westminster!

I remember pleasant visits this autumn to the Abingdons at Wytham Abbey, their fine old place, set in loveliest woods, within an easy drive of Oxford. "Why Abbey?" I asked my host, who did not seem to know that the place had never been a monastery, though part of the house was of the fifteenth century. Lord Abingdon himself was a kind {35} of patriarch,[15] with a daughter married four and twenty years, and a small son not yet four. He was trying to dispose of some of his land for building, but without great success. The Berks.h.i.+re side of the Thames (to my mind far the most beautiful and attractive) was not the popular quarter for extensions from Oxford, which was spreading far out towards the north in the uninteresting directions of Banbury and Woodstock.

Term over, I went north to spend Christmas with the Butes at Mountstuart, where I found my young host, as was only natural, much interested in a recent decision of the Scottish Courts, which had diverted into his pocket 40,000 which his father had bequeathed to two of the Scottish Catholic dioceses.[16] My Christmas here (the first for many years) was saddened by old memories; for I missed at every turn the pervading presence of my lost friend, to whose taste and genius the varied beauty of his island home was so largely due.

However, our large party of young people gave the right note {36} of hilarity to the time; and if there was little suns.h.i.+ne without (I noted that we had never a gleam from Christmas to New Year), there was plenty of warmth and brightness and merriment within. The graceful crypt (all that was yet available) of the lovely chapel was fragrant and bright with tuberoses, chrysanthemums and white hyacinths; and the religious services of the season were carried out with the care and reverence which had been the rule, under Lord Bute's supervision, for more than thirty years. The day after New Year, young Bute left home for London and Central Africa (the attraction of the black man never seemed to pall on him), and I made my way to our Highland Abbey to spend the remainder of the Christmas vacation.

[1] "Do you very much mind dining in the middle of the day?" a would-be hostess at St. Andrews once asked George Angus. "Oh, not a bit," was his reply, "as long as I get another dinner in the evening!"

[2] It was, I think, a Scottish critic who suggested an emendation of the line, "Sermons from stones, books in the running brooks."

Obviously, he said, the transposition was a clerical error, the true reading being, "Sermons from books, stones in the running brooks!"

[3] Another attempt, nine years later, to abolish the same statute was decisively defeated; but in 1920 the restriction of degrees in divinity to Anglican clergymen was removed by a unanimous vote, though the examiners.h.i.+ps are still confined to clergymen.

[4] "Well, now, that is not my idea of an owl," said a casual visitor to a bird-stuffer's shop, looking at one sitting on a perch in a rather dark corner. "Isn't it?" replied the bird-stuffer dryly, peering up over his spectacles. "Well, it's G.o.d's, anyhow." The owl was a live one!

[5] The "young Blackfriar" obtained (in History) the first First Cla.s.s gained in our Hall, rose to be Provincial of his Order in England, and had the happiness of seeing, on August 15, 1921, the foundation stone of a Dominican church and priory laid at Oxford.

[6] Music was his hobby: by profession he was a chemist, and the City a.n.a.lyst of Oxford. I introduced him as such to dear Mgr. Kennard, who promptly asked us both to dinner, and during the meal laboriously discussed the mediaeval history of Oxford, which he had carefully "mugged up" beforehand. He had understood me to say that my friend's position was that of City _Annalist_!

[7] The English of these uncouth concatenations, which are at least evidence of the facility with which any number of German words can be strung together into one, appears to be (as far as I can unravel them): 1. "The tearful tragedy of the marriage of a dromedary-driver on the transport of Transvaal troops to the tropics." 2. "The maker of a marble monument for the Moorish mother of a wholesale a.s.sa.s.sin among the Mussulmans at Mecca." Pro-dee-gious!

[8] Such were nearly all our Benedictine priories in England--a circ.u.mstance which added to their historic interest, if not to their architectural h.o.m.ogeneity.

[9] I was once invited to write an article on the "six finest houses in London." The word "finest," of course, wants defining. However, my selection, in order of merit, was:--Holland House (perhaps rather a country house in the metropolitan area than a London house), Dorchester, Stafford, Bridgewater, and Montagu Houses, and Gwydyr House, Whitehall. How many Londoners know the last-named?

[10] Built about a century previously, to provide proper access to Worcester College, then and long afterwards dubbed (from its remoteness and inaccessibility) "Botany Bay." The only approach to it had been by a narrow lane, across which linen from the wash used to hang, and once impeded the dignified progress of a Vice-Chancellor. "If there is a college there," cried the potentate in a pa.s.sion, "there must be a road to it." And the result was Beaumont Street!

[11] Oxonians know the tradition that an All Souls candidate is invited to dinner at high table, and given cherry pie; and that careful note is taken as to the manner in which he deals with the stones!

[12] A subsequent legend related that the undergraduates of his new college were greatly interested in discovering (from reference to an encyclopaedia) that a Latter-day Saint was equivalent to a Mormon.

"Where were the freshman's wives?" was the natural inquiry. Answer came there none; but the excitement grew intense when it was rumoured that he had applied to a fellow of Magdalen for six ladies' tickets for the chapel service.

[13] "And I call to my a.s.sistance her who is ever a Virgin And who ever looks on all the sufferings among men."

--SOPH. AJAX. v. 835.

[14] "My lord! my lord!" a Midlothian farmer (who had just been served with an iced souffle) whispered to his host at a tenants' dinner at Dalmeny: "I'm afraid there's something wrang wi' the pudden: it's stane cauld." Lord Rosebery instantly called a footman, and spoke to him in an undertone. "No, do you know?" he said, turning to his guest with a smile, "it is quite right. I find that this kind of pudding is _meant_ to be cold!"

[15] Less so, however, than the then Earl of Leicester (the second), between whose eldest daughter (already a grandmother) and youngest child there was an interval of some fifty years. Lord Ronald Gower once told Queen Victoria (who liked such t.i.tbits of family gossip) the astonis.h.i.+ng, if not unique, fact that Lord Leicester married exactly a century after his father. The Queen flatly refused to believe it; and as the Court was at the moment at Aix-les-Bains, Lord Ronald was for the time unable to adduce doc.u.mentary evidence that he was not "pulling her Majesty's leg." The respective dates were, as a matter of fact, 1775 and 1875.

[16] Lord Bute could never do anything quite like other people; and his legacies to Galloway and Argyll had been hampered by conditions to which no Catholic bishop, even if he accepted them for himself, could possibly bind his successor.

{37}

CHAPTER III

1905

There had been an official visitation, by Abbot Gasquet, of our abbey at Fort Augustus in January, 1905. I had been unable to attend it, but the news reached me at Oxford that one of its results had been the resignation of his office by the abbot. This was not so important as it sounded; for the Holy See did not "see its way" (horrid phrase!) to accept the proffered resignation, and the abbot remained in office.

I attended this month a Catholic "Demonstration," as it was called (a word I always hated), in honour of the Bishop of Birmingham--or the "Catholic Bishop of Oxford," as an enthusiastic convert, who had set up a bookshop in the city, with a large portrait of Bishop Ilsley in the window, chose to designate him. The function was in the town hall, and Father Bernard Vaughan made one of his most florid orations, which got terribly on the nerves of good old Sir John Day (the Catholic judge), who sat next me on the platform. "Why on earth doesn't somebody stop him?" he whispered to me in a loud "aside," as the eloquent Jesuit "let himself go" on the subject of the Pope and the King. On the other hand, I heard the Wesleyan Mayor, who was in the chair, murmur to _his_ {38} neighbour, "This is eloquence indeed!" "Vocal relief" (as the reporters say at cla.s.sical concerts) was afforded by a capital choir, which sang with amazing energy, "Faith of our Fathers," and Faber's sentimental hymn, the opening words of which--"Full in the pant" ...

are apt to call forth irreverent smiles.

I took Bernard Vaughan (who knew little of Oxford) a walk round the city on Sunday afternoon. We looked into one of the most "advanced"

churches, where a young curate, his biretta well on the back of his head, was catechising a cla.s.s of children. "Tell me, children," we heard him say, "who was the first Protestant?" "The Devil, Father!"

came the shrill response. "Yes, quite right, the Devil!" and we left the church much edified.

There was good music to be heard in Oxford in those early days of the year; and I attended some enjoyable concerts with a music-loving member of my Hall. The boy-prodigies, of whom there were several above the horizon at this time, generally had good audiences at Oxford; and I used to find something inexplicably uncanny in the attainments and performances of these gifted youngsters--Russian, German and English.

Astonis.h.i.+ng technique--as far as was possible for half-grown fingers--one might fairly look for; but whence the _sehnsucht_, the pa.s.sionate yearning, that one seemed to find in some, at least, of their interpretations? That they should feel it appears incredible: yet it could not have been a mere imitative monkey-trick, a mere echo of the teaching of their master. And why should there be this precocious development in music alone, of all the arts? These things want {39} explaining psychologically. I was amused at one of these recitals to hear the eminent violinist Marie Hall (who happened to be sitting next me) say that the boy (it was the Russian Mischa Elman) could not possibly play Bazzini's _Ronde des Lutins_ (he did play it, and admirably), and also that he had suddenly "struck," to the dismay of his _impresario_, against appearing as a "wunderkind" in sailor kit and short socks, and had insisted on a dress suit!

The Torpids were rowed in icy weather this year; I took Lady Gainsborough and her daughter on to Queen's barge; and Queen's (in which they were interested) made, with the help of two Rhodes Scholars, two b.u.mps, amid shouts of "Go it, _Quaggas_!"--a new _pet.i.t nom_ since my time, when only the Halls had nicknames. Tuckwell, of an older generation than mine, reports in his reminiscences how St. Edmund Hall, in his time, was encouraged by cries from the bank of "On, St. Edmund, on!" and not, as in these degenerate days, "Go it, Teddy!" It was a novelty on the river to see the coaching done from bicycles instead of from horseback. But bicycles were ubiquitous at Oxford, and doubtless of the greatest service; and my young Benedictines and I went far afield awheel on architectural and other excursions. Pa.s.sing the broken and battered park railings of beautiful Nuneham (not yet repaired by Squire "Lulu"[1]), my companion commented on their condition; and I told him the legend of the former owner, who was so {40} disconsolate at the death of his betrothed (a daughter of Dean Liddell) on their wedding-day, that he never painted or repaired his park railings again!

I heard at the end of February of the engagement (concluded in a beauty-spot of the Italian Riviera) of my young friend Bute--he would not be twenty-four till June--to Augusta Bellingham. A boy-and-girl attachment which had found its natural and happy conclusion--that was the whole story, though the papers, of course, were full of impossibly romantic tales about both the young people. They went off straight to Rome, in Christian fas.h.i.+on, to ask the Pope's blessing on their betrothal; and I just missed them there, for I had the happiness this spring of another brief visit to Italy, at the invitation of a Neapolitan friend. I spent two or three delightful weeks at the Bertolini Palace, high above dear dirty Naples, with an entrancing view over the sunlit bay, and Vesuvius (quite quiescent) in the background.

I found the city not much changed in thirty years, and, as always, much more attractive than its queer and half-savage population. Watching the cab-drivers trying to urge their lumbering steeds into a canter, I thought how oddly different are the sounds employed by different nations to make their horses go. The Englishman makes the well-known untransferable click with his tongue: the Norwegian imitates the sound of a kiss: the Arab rolls an r-r-r: the Neapolitan coachman _barks_ Wow! wow! wow! The subject is worth developing.

I met at Naples, among other people, Sir Charles Wyndham, with his unmistakable "Criterion" voice, and as cynically amusing off the stage as he generally {41} was on it. He reminded me of what I had forgotten--that I had once shown him all over our Abbey at Fort Augustus. I told him of a lecture Beerbohm Tree had recently given at Oxford, and showed him my copy of a striking pa.s.sage[2] which I had transcribed from a shorthand note of the lecture. "n.o.ble words," the veteran actor agreed, "I know them well; but they were not written for his Oxford lecture. I remember them a dozen or more years ago, in an address he gave (I think in 1891) to the Playgoers' Club; and the last clause ran--'to point _in the twilight of a waning century_ to the greater light beyond.' Those words would not of course be applicable in 1904."

I had looked forward to a day in the museum, with its wonderful sculptures and unique relics of Pompeii; but I was lost there, for the whole collection was being rearranged, and no catalogue available. The Cathedral too was closed, being under restoration--for the sixth time in six centuries! Some of the Neapolitan churches seemed to me sadly wanting in internal order and cleanliness, an exception being a spotless and perfectly-kept convent chapel on the hill, conveniently near me for daily ma.s.s. The German Emperor made, with his customary suddenness, a descent on Naples during {42} my stay. The quays and streets were hastily decorated, and there was a ferment of excitement everywhere; but I fled from the hurly-burly by cable-railway (_funicol-funicola!_) to the heights of San Martino, to visit the desecrated and abandoned Certosa, now a "national monument": tourists trampling about the lovely church with their hats on. It made me sick, and I told the astonished guide so. The cloister garth, with its sixty white marble columns, charmed and impressed me; but all _molto triste_.

Three old Carthusian monks, I heard, were still permitted to huddle in some corner of their monastery till they dropped and died.[3]

A day I spent at Lucerne on my way home, in fog, snow, and sleet (no sign of spring), I devoted partly to the "Kriegs-und-Frieden"

Museum--chiefly _kriegs!_ with an astonis.h.i.+ngly complete collection of all things appertaining to war. I went to Downside on my arrival in England, had some talk with the kind abbot on Fort Augustus affairs, and admired the n.o.ble church, a wonderful landmark with its lofty tower, choir now quite complete externally, and _chevet_ of flanking chapels. I got to Arundel in time for the functions of Holy Week, and thought I had seen nothing more beautiful in Italy than St. Philip's great church on Maundy Thursday, its "chapel of repose" bright with lilies, azaleas and tulips, tall silver candlesticks and hangings of rose-coloured velvet. I had landed in {43} England speechless with a cold caught at Lucerne, and could neither sing nor preach. Summer Term at Oxford opened with a snowstorm, and May Day was glacial. I found I had been elected to the new County Club, a good house with a really charming garden, and (to paraphrase Angelo Cyrus Bantam) "rendered bewitching by the absence of ---- undergraduates, who have an amalgamation of themselves at the Union." The most noteworthy visitor to the Union this term was Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (then leader of the Opposition), who made a somewhat vitriolic speech, lasting an hour, against the Government. The 550 undergraduates present listened, cheered frequently--and voted against him by a large majority, a good deal (I heard afterwards) to the old gentleman's chagrin.

The Archbishop of Westminster (Dr. Bourne) came to Oxford in May as the guest of Mgr. Kennard, who illuminated in his honour the garden and quad of his pretty old house in St. Aldate's, and gave a dinner and big reception, at neither of which I could be present, being laid up from a bicycle-accident. It was Eights-week, and his Grace saw the races one evening, and I think was also present at a Newman Society debate, when a motion advocating the setting up of a Catholic University in Ireland by the Government was rejected by a considerable majority.[4] I was able to hobble to Balliol a few days later, when Sir Victor Horsley delivered {44} the Boyle lecture to a crowded and distinguished audience. I noted down as interesting one thing he said (I fancy it was a quotation from somebody else[5]): "Every scientific truth pa.s.ses through three stages: in the first it is decried as absurd; in the second it is said to be opposed to revealed religion; in the third everybody knew it before!" Sir Victor's lecture left me, rightly or wrongly, under the impression that he was something of a sceptic; and I asked my neighbour, a clerical don of note, from Keble, why so many medical bigwigs seemed inclined to atheism. He answered (oddly enough) that it was only what David had prophesied long ago when he asked despairingly (Psalm lx.x.xvii. 11), _Numquid medici suscitabunt et confitebuntur tibi?_ ("Shall the physicians rise up and praise Thee?")--a curious little bit of exegesis from an Anglican.[6]

June 16 was a busy day--a garden party at Blenheim, with special trains for the Oxford guests; the d.u.c.h.ess, in blue and white and a big black hat, welcoming her guests in her low, sweet, and curiously un-American voice, and the little Duke rather affable in khaki (he was encamped with the Oxfords.h.i.+re Hussars in the park). We sat about under the big cedars, and there was organ-music in the cool {45} white library, where I noticed that Sargent's very odd group of the ducal family had been hung--with not altogether happy effect--as a pendant to the famous and beautiful group painted by Reynolds. I got back to Oxford just in time for the festival dinner of the Canning and Chatham Clubs, at which my old schoolfellow Alfred Lyttelton, Hugh Cecil, and other Tory notabilities, were guests. Alfred spoke admirably: Hugh, though loudly called upon, refused to speak at all. The President of Magdalen, by whom I sat, told me in pained tones how some Christ Church undergraduates, _suadente diabolo_, had recently scaled the wall into Magdalen deer-park, had dragged (Heaven knew how) over the wall two of our sacrosanct fallow deer, and had turned the poor brutes loose in the "High"--an outrage without precedent in the college annals. I duly sympathized.

A feature of Catholic and Benedictine interest in this year's Commemoration was the conferring of the honorary doctorate of letters on my old friend and fellow-novice, Dom Germain Morin, the distinguished patristic scholar.[7] I did _not_ attend the hot and tiresome Encaenia, but I went to the Magdalen concert, where I found myself talking between the songs to Lady Winchilsea, whose husband and brother-in-law had been friends of mine at Eton, and had acted with me, I think, in more than one school play. The lady was born a Harcourt, {46} and talked interestingly about beautiful Nuneham in the days of her girlhood. I met her again next day at Radley College, where the annual "gaudy" was always a pleasant wind-up to the summer term. It turned wet, and the usual concert was given, not _al fresco_, but in the fine old panelled schoolroom with its open roof, once Sir George Bowyer's barn.[8] Two days later I kept yet another "silver jubilee"

(following naturally on that of my receiving the Benedictine habit), namely the anniversary of my religious profession. Being in London, I spent the day with what piety was possible, in the Dominican monastery at Haverstock Hill, attending high ma.s.s in the beautiful church, dining with the good friars, and sitting awhile in their pretty shady garden.

One of the fathers told me of a notice he had personally seen affixed to a pillar in Milan Cathedral in 1899. I copied it forthwith, as one of the funniest things of the kind which I had ever seen. Here it is _verbatim_:--

APPELE TO CHARITABLES.--The Brothers (so-called of Mercy) ask some slender Arms for their Hospital They harbour all kinds of diseases, and have no respect for religion.

I met this evening my nephew Kelburne, R.N., who had just been appointed first lieutenant on {47} H.M.S. _Renown_ (which was to take the Prince and Princess of Wales to India); he was looking forward to a good spell of leave and plenty of sport in the East. He seemed very keen on polo, and amused me with a yarn about his (naval) team having been offered 50 if they would kill Winston Churchill in their coming match against the House of Commons![9] The event of July was Bute's wedding in Ireland on the 6th. I travelled straight to Castle Bellingham two days previously, with Bute's Scots pipers in my train, much admired by the populace. I found, of course, the little Louth village, and indeed the whole countryside, _en fete_. The bride-elect, in inviting me, had spoken about "a quiet wedding at home"; but how was that possible? for the day could not be other than a popular festival to the warm-hearted folk among whom "Miss Augusta" had spent all her life. The wedding guests, bidden and unbidden, converged on the little country church in every imaginable conveyance, from special trains and motor-cars to the humble donkey-cart. The marriage service was simple and devout, the officiant being neither cardinal nor bishop, but the bride's own parish priest, while the music was grave plain-chant, perfectly rendered, with an exquisite motett by Palestrina. The royal Stuart tartan worn by the bridegroom, and the vivid St. Patrick's blue of the bridesmaids' cloaks and hoods, made a picturesque splash of colour against the ma.s.ses of pure white lilies and marguerites with which the church was {48} decorated. Most picturesque of all was the going-away of the happy pair from the little fis.h.i.+ng-harbour, whither they were preceded, accompanied, and followed by troops of friends.

Embarking in a white barge manned by oarsmen in the Bellingham liveries, they were rowed out to the steamer which was to take them across the sea to their honeymoon in Galloway. The pipers, following in another barge, played "Johnnie Stuart's gone awa'"; the band on the pier struck up "Come Back to Erin"; and amid cheers and tears and acclamations and blessings the white boat turned the corner of the pierhead and glided out over the rippling sunlit waters. We were regaled afterwards with some delightful part-singing by a famous Dublin choir on the castle lawn. Next day I departed with the Loudouns for Belfast, where it rained as it _can_ rain only in Ireland, and I thought of one of Lady Dufferin's charming letters from the south of France to her Irish relatives:--

"O that I could transport a bit of that Provence sky which I have been enjoying, over your dear, dripping heads in Ireland! It is a terrible drawback on the goods of life at home to lead a web-foot existence. I sometimes fancy that I could put up with any amount of despotic monarchy taken warm, with Burgundy, rather than the British const.i.tution, with all that cold water!"

We crossed to Stranraer in rain and mist, but found the sun s.h.i.+ning in Galloway. The Loudouns went on to Ayrs.h.i.+re, and I to visit my niece at Dunskey, the new house which already looked old, with much dark oak, good pictures, and fine old prints everywhere. I liked the long and lofty terrace in front, commanding a beautiful view of the blue {49} curve of the Irish Sea, the Mourne Mountains in the background, and, far to the south-westward, the Isle of Man[10] hanging like an azure cloud on the horizon. Everywhere round my dear old home,[11] in farms and village, gardens and woods, were signs of the changes and improvements wrought by the late owner, who had barely lived to see them. _Sic vos non vobis_, I sadly said to myself, as I stood on the point between the two bays at the foot of Dunskey Glen (his chosen resting-place), and looked at the simple granite cross rising above the brackens and heather. Portpatrick I found changed out of knowledge, with its red-roofed houses, electric light, golf-course, and big hotel on the brow of the hill. _Tout pa.s.se_. I had loved the quiet old-world village of my childhood, but I could not grudge the place its new prosperity, and all was full of interest to me. From Dunskey I went on to Kelburne and Loudoun Castle--the latter big, imposing and bare, and a little suggestive of Castle Carabas! though new pictures and redecoration did much, later on, to improve the interior. My examination-week at the Dumfries convent followed, diversified by an interesting visit to the local madhouse (euphemistically known as the "Crichton Royal Inst.i.tution"), {50} said to be the finest lunatic asylum in Britain; with splendid buildings, in perfect condition, 800 acres of fertile land, and the same number of patients, from country gentlemen to paupers. The high wall round the establishment was being replaced by a hedge, and the attendants were kept out of sight as much as possible, in accordance with the modern theory of not letting lunatics know that they were under restraint.[12] The luxuriousness of the whole place, in comparison with the home surroundings of most of the inmates, was very noticeable; and the spectacle of a "doited"

farm-labourer seated in an arm-chair in a carpeted lounge, reading the _Graphic_ upside down, was certainly curious, if not instructive.